Murder In The Motor Stable: (Auguste Didier Mystery 9) (3 page)

Tonight was the committee meeting, and that eccentric woman Hester Hart would be on the agenda. Isabel had a moment’s uneasiness. She had not yet encountered her at the club, but some years ago she had been introduced to Hester – had she been formally introduced? She couldn’t remember. What she did remember was that something unpleasant had happened, something to do with His Majesty when Prince of Wales, but whatever it was could not possibly be of any importance now, could it?

Auguste, ready for the evening in tail coat and white tie, was watching Tatiana and her maid in their nightly battle to array his wife in full evening dress. The battle was between Eloise, who wished her mistress to do full justice both to her beauty and to her own prowess as a maid, and Tatiana who wished to get the whole ordeal over as quickly as possible in order to return to the more interesting aspects of life such as motorcars. He was aware that most husbands were never permitted to
view such intimate scenes but he found it a rare chance to talk to Tatiana as well as a fascinating look into the deeper mysteries of social ritual. It was like the preparation of a grand dish, perhaps a
caneton
. There were the bones, covered with luscious flesh which in turn was crowned by a sauce perfectly chosen for the dish and the occasion. Tonight Tatiana’s sauce was wide-sashed ivory silk with a satin underskirt and colourful embroidered panels. Once the sauce was selected, then came the garnish. Tatiana had a tendency towards impatience over jewels, flowers and fans, but he had counselled her into wisdom. The correct garnish was essential, for appearance was a key to taste and taste to the conveyance of the true message of the dish.

‘Why do you not want Hester Hart to join the committee?’ Auguste watched fascinated as Tatiana wriggled impatiently and Eloise struggled with the fastenings of a Romanov diamond necklace said, Tatiana had once told him casually, to have belonged to Catherine the Great.

‘You always know if meat or fish are bad even though they may be disguised by sauces or spices. How?’

‘By instinct, which of course is not instinct, but the experience of a thousand other such dishes.’

‘That’s how I know too. I’ve met a lot of Englishwomen. Many I like, many I do not, either personally or as a type, but Hester Hart is different. Every time I meet her I smell trouble, Auguste. She is charming to me, she’s lively to listen to, interesting to look at, the toast of London, and yet, and yet . . .’

“‘I do not like thee, Dr Fell/The reason why I cannot tell,’” Auguste quoted for her.

‘She does not add up as a dish, Auguste. She has explored Syria, Iraq, Northern Africa, and many other places, all on
her own. She is a great and intrepid traveller, and yet now she has decided to
settle
in England.’

‘London and England have much to offer.’

‘But the taste for danger does not die so easily, Auguste. It lives on and has to be fed.’

‘That is why she has joined your club,’ he pointed out reasonably. ‘She will travel in fast motorcars instead of trekking or going by camel or horse. She will be a Racer, though, not a Rabbit.’

‘Sometimes I feel I have more in common with Hortensia Millward than with my committee,’ its president announced. ‘Why did we pick two Racers who talk only of gradients, grease cups and Gordon Bennett Cups, and two Rabbits who don’t know a worm-gear from a goose-neck?’

‘What trouble could Miss Hart cause if she were on the committee?’

‘I don’t know. That’s the danger.’

He watched Tatiana throwing on the last items of garnish with less attention than he would have paid to the placing of an olive, and thought longingly of the moment that they would be home again and the process be reversed.

‘And the hats, my love. What danger can they pose?’

‘You’d be surprised,’ his wife informed him darkly.

How could ladies get so heated over such an issue? Auguste wondered. Then he remembered Plum’s, the gentlemen’s club where he had been chef for several years, and the passionate arguments over the ritual of Plum’s Passing. If gentlemen could come to blows over demolishing a meringue replica of Napoleon, could ladies be expected to be different over hats? He fervently hoped so, because in Plum’s case it had led to murder.

Auguste cautiously ventured into the club kitchen. True, he had left it in safe hands, but one could never be
absolutely
certain until one’s own eye was satisfied. Was all ready? The sauce for the
filets de sole
, the chiffonade for the consommé, the
homard à la Mornay
, the
poularde à la Nantua, poularde Alexandra
, the
crème Anglaise
– ah, yes, he deduced this was prepared by the fact that Pierre’s sugar nippers were lying on the table. Perfection would elude him while such details were overlooked. Routine was as important as the creative part of cooking. Or was it? he wondered. Pierre was an inspired cook, with a flair that owed nothing to conventional training. He had told Auguste he had been trained at the Marseille Hôtel Grande, but Auguste had his suspicions that his stay there had been brief and Pierre’s miraculous affinity with both fish and fowl owed more to the back streets of the city than the hotels it boasted in Baedeker’s Guides. Had Napoleon been lucky enough to sink exhausted by the roadside anywhere near Pierre Calille, he would have had a dish far superior to chicken Marengo.

‘There is something wrong with the tongue?’ Pierre appeared at his side, face strained and anxious as he saw Auguste peering into the tinplate press.

‘No, Pierre,’ Auguste replied hastily. Pierre took criticism hard. Indeed, who could complain at the satisfying red tongue within and its exhilarating aroma of pungent spices? ‘I was thinking of Napoleon.’

‘Ah.’ Pierre’s anxious face relaxed into its usual placid contours. ‘A great man of the people.’

In the interests of dinner, Auguste forbore to point out that the peoples of Italy, Egypt, Germany, Poland, Russia,
etc.
might not agree with this definition.

‘You have much experience of murder, I am told,
monsieur,’ Pierre continued. ‘Do you believe he was poisoned by the British, as rumour says?’

Why was it that once an unwelcome thought decided to enter one’s mind, everybody and everything was only too happy to remind you of it? ‘No. The English had nothing to gain from his murder, and they are a ruthless but practical nation. Unless,’ Auguste added fairly, ‘a trivial cause arouses their passions.’

Like committee meetings and hats, the unwelcome thought of murder helpfully nudged. Or even Hester Hart.

‘Any other business?’ Tatiana had planned the most infinitesimal of pauses before launching, thankfully, into the security arrangements for the Dolly Dobbs. She did not receive it.

‘That hat!’ boomed Lady Bullinger instantly. ‘The obvious solution is a gentleman’s cap, like I wear. Plenty of room to stick the badge on.’

Tatiana’s heart sank. She was fond of Maud but she was undoubtedly formidable both in temperament and reputation. Fortunately she drove in so many races she was unable to grace the club as often as she’d like, a fact her husband Sir Algernon probably welcomed as well for much the same sort of reason.

‘But a cap won’t take a veil, Maud,’ Agatha pointed out.

‘Who needs one?’

Tatiana tried hard not to gaze at Lady Bullinger’s weather-beaten complexion.

‘Why not something very large to keep off the rain, full-brimmed with flowers and perhaps feathers cut into motorcar shapes on top,’ Phyllis suggested brightly.

‘We’d take off like kites in the wind, Phyllis,’ Agatha pointed out kindly.

Tatiana had a pleasant vision of her committee borne off instantly into the sky and left permanently on a cloud. Individually each member of it might be reasonable, together decisions were as hard to reach as when Auguste agonised over a new recipe.

‘Not if it doesn’t have a tall crown.’ Isabel considered her fellow Rabbit’s proposition seriously.

‘It has to carry the
badge
.’ Maud thumped the table. ‘A cap’s what’s needed. I can pull mine over my ears.’

‘I’m sure my ears don’t need covering,’ Isabel informed them. She touched one lightly to indicate how petal-like they still were despite their thirty-five years.

‘Are you implying that I have
large
ears?’ Maud thundered in astonishment.

‘How about a tricorne?’ Agatha suggested. ‘It’s very fashionable. We could tie a veil round that.’

‘We’d look like upside-down Christmas gifts,’ Phyllis giggled.

The Duchess cast her a look of great dislike. ‘Then I vote for Maud’s cap.’

‘But
your
ears are beautiful,’ Isabel remarked innocently.

‘How about a tam o’shanter?’ Tatiana said hastily, seeing Maud was about to erupt.

‘Very
sporting
,’ Agatha said approvingly.

‘I don’t want to look sporting, I want to look pretty,’ Phyllis declared.

When all else fails, change the subject, Tatiana thought quickly. The atmosphere was getting even tenser than she’d feared and surely that could not all be due to hats. ‘There is a suggestion on the table that Miss Hester Hart, being of such
international repute, should be asked to join the committee.’

There was immediate silence as four committee members inspected the ink blotters and paper before them with intense interest.

So she was going to have to break it. Tatiana steeled herself. ‘In principle, I feel it is not a good plan to invite such a new member to join us before we can call ourselves truly established as a committee.’

‘A lady in the public eye such as she is could do the club nothing but good.’ Phyllis had least qualms about speaking first. ‘There is talk of Ellis and Walery issuing a postcard of her in Arabian costume, and darling Roderick says she is a most remarkable lady.’

‘You did not seem to think her remarkable when you contributed that article to
The Ladies’ Companion
last year about how the true role of women was to provide comfort and beauty for gentlemen, and that women who galloped across deserts on camels or horses must be lacking in true womanliness,’ Isabel pointed out.

‘I never said that,’ Phyllis wailed. ‘Anyway, someone wrote it all for me.’

‘The club needs more
real
drivers like Miss Hart,’ Lady Bullinger trumpeted, ‘and fewer of those who refuse to venture out in their motorcars when there’s a cloud this side of the Equator.’

‘I have to think of my complexion,’ Phyllis cried, stung at this broadside from darling Roderick’s godmother.

‘All that stage lighting, no doubt,’ Agatha murmured. ‘It’s a trifle bumpy.’

Phyllis glared. ‘I vote for the suggestion.’

‘I don’t,’ Isabel said. She had remembered just how Miss Hart’s plans for the Diamond Jubilee in ’97 had cut across her
own, and the last thing she wanted was the same lady in a position of power now.

‘I do,’ Lady Bullinger declared magnanimously. ‘Give the woman a chance.’

‘Do you know her?’ Tatiana asked curiously. She had the impression that on the few occasions Hester had so far visited the club, Maud had almost pointedly tried to evade her.

Lady Bullinger looked stubborn. ‘Well enough.’ She cleared her throat to indicate the discussion was over.

‘And I vote against her,’ said Agatha. ‘I feel there would be far too much public attention focused on her, and not on the motorcars.’ Especially the Dolly Dobbs, she thought. ‘So you have the casting vote, Your Highness.’

Tatiana disliked being addressed as Your Highness, preferring Mrs Didier, though reluctantly bowed to the way of the world and allowed her royal rank to be used for official club purposes. She also disliked being put in this position. ‘I vote no.’

‘I don’t think Hester will like it.’ Phyllis suddenly looked nervous.

‘She won’t know unless someone chooses to tell her,’ Isabel pointed out comfortingly.

‘No one would discuss private committee business, surely,’ Tatiana said firmly.

‘It has happened,’ Agatha murmured.

‘If the cap fits,’ Maud rumbled, and Agatha looked furious.

‘Ah yes, let’s return to the issue of the hat,’ Tatiana broke in hastily. It might be her imagination, but she remembered Auguste saying that one could
smell
a dangerous situation devloping like the rising aroma of garlic and spices fried in oil.

The dining room of the Ladies’ Motoring Club was palatial, light and airy, unlike so many gentlemen’s clubs he had seen. Auguste had instantly approved. With its pale green walls, Adam fireplaces and elegant columns, it was a suitable setting for Didier dishes.

The arrangement of the tables had been the subject of much discussion when the club had opened in March. Should there be a communal table, or separate tables? Compromise had been established with a communal table at luncheon and separate tables in the evening, so that gentlemen should not be foisted on those ladies seeking immunity from masculine company. This principle had been bent a little to permit a permanent male maître d’, though his staff was female. A restaurant, it was agreed, was primarily a social venue, not for technical motorcar discussions, and all opposition vanished when Luigi had presented himself for the position. Eyes that melted as softly as butter into a hollandaise, was Tatiana’s description of him to Auguste, who was more impressed by his gifts of diplomacy. Now, he was as indispensable as the fluted pillar in the centre of the restaurant.